I personally have a black School Hymn 15". We initially got them because I wanted something with some rigidity as opposed to those neoprene sleeves. The main damages I've seen to Mac laptops are them getting squished with the effects of the case getting slightly screwed up (half-broken trackpad) and the screen getting keyboard prints etched on it. Nobody's has been damaged with the Crumpler cases. The rigidity seems to nicely even out any pressure it's under. There's a little bit of padding too that's nice.

That hard-shell Incase one looks somewhat promising, it wasn't available when we were buying. Notice it's not compatible with the recently released MacBook Pro. I probably wouldn't get it because it seems more like armor for your laptop rather than a case for it. It doesn't protect your ports from those few dribbles from a water bottle that may be also in your bag. Additionally, it seems like it would be a pain to get in and out of the "armor." If you fly a lot with your laptop like me, that'd be a tremendous headache at the dumb security checkpoints.

I've never seen that kind of rigid covers for laptops, they must be precisely the right size to fit a model i guess. I do think a "carrying" softer case makes more sense, but then I don't know what your specific needs are (war zone coding etc)

At work we use Pelicases for our MacBook Pros - http://www.pro-cases.co.uk/acatalog/Medi...Cases.html
The 1520 is perfect for a 17" MacBook Pro with PSU and other accessories underneath it. Comes in very handy if you aren't convinced your clients won't drive over it. Those are quite little unwieldy if you want something to carry around every day though.

Thanks guys. I'm actually looking for just for a hard case that fits it perfectly. I've all ready got a nice leftover WWDC 08 carrying bag that the nice people at Apple gave me at my stay in Cupertino.

I've never quite understood what the point of having a tight fitting case was. It's really only going to protect against scratches, and the plastic cases are probably going to scratch more easily than the aluminum of the computer itself.

I have used the Spec cases before, they arent bad but not really my thing. They have a pretty decent vent system so they dont tend to overheat the laptops, which is something you need to be careful of with hard cases.

I find any cases annoying though, I dont even have one on my iPhone, so take my opinion with some salt.